Bob Dylan Blows Off White House Celebration of Nobel Winners

(JTA) — President Barack Obama met with four of the recent American Nobel Prize laureates, including two Jews, but Bob Dylan did not make an appearance.

The winners of the award — physics laureates Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, economics sciences laureate Oliver Hart and chemistry laureate Fraser Stoddart — visited the White House Wednesday. All four men were born in Britain but live and work in the United States.

Kosterlitz, of Brown University, is the son of German Jews who escaped the Nazis. Hart, of Harvard University, is descended from a prominent London Jewish family; his great-grandfather, an Orthodox Jew named Samuel Montagu, who was a member of the House of Commons for 15 years.

The Swedish Academy announced last month that singer-songwriter Dylan, awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, would not attend the Dec. 10 award ceremony in Stockholm due to “pre-existing commitments.” The academy noted that Dylan is required to present a Nobel lecture to receive the $927,740 prize.

This story "Bob Dylan Blows Off White House Celebration of Nobel Winners" was written by Marcy Oster.

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